A Quick Short Story (Ready in 5 Minutes)

 

Number One Best Noodles Ramen - Recipe Guide

1) Folow this recipe exactly for perfect noodles every time.

2) Open packet, remove noodles. Put sauces aside. At this point, boil kettle, which will give you time to think.

3) Put noodles in a pan - do not add heat yet. The kettle still needs to boil. You have two to three minutes to think about things. 

4) As the kettle boils, let your mind wander. You're here, it's 11:30am on a work day, and you are sorting yourself out with some ramen. It'll be really tasty.

5) Add boiling hot water to ramen. You need to boil this for at least four minutes. 

During that time, it will allow you to stare out of the window (if you are lucky enough to have one) and think about how you got here. You have four minutes to think about how your life transformed so dramatically over six months, and that you have not left the house, even for groceries as they have been delivered to your door.

Stir the ramen after 90 seconds.

You think about how utterly fortunate you are to be able to work from home, and how so many other people have faced such hardships in their jobs. You should feel guilty at this point - it is natural. 

Check the ramen has separated after two minutes.

You start to think about the decline in all of your (admittedly few) frienship groups, and desire to see them more regularly, over Zoom, over the phone, over fucking anywhere. You should be staring at a space above the  hob at this point for maximum tastiness. 
You have thought about your workplace requiring people back next month. This unnerves you. 

At this point, the ramen should be boiling.  

6) Remove the ramen from the heat, and at this point think about all of the other things you did during lockdown - you said you would start painting, and you did, kind of. You said you would write stories, and you wrote one draft and then deleted it. 
You should check your phone at this point, to give the ramen a rest, and to remind yourself where the ultimate blame lies.

7) Add the sauce sachets to the ramen. As you do so, think about everything you used to do and now can't. This meal will serve as a reminder. 

8) Enjoy.

The Death of Ennui, The Rise of Hot Takes

I was born in 1984, and therefore just (although still saw) missed a lot of what would be described as 'Gen X'. From my basic, and brief understanding, this was a period where a great malaise swept the nation and humanity, as it seemed to exist, descended into nonchalance.

That being said, it's very understandable, as the first generation where it felt like the world's issues were out of their hands - that they could not engage societally or make a functional change in policies that felt beyond their remit. Therefore, when faced with this, and, despite the Clinton-era promises of change, there was 'more of the same'. How better to revolt, than to disengage. From this era were a number of my favourite pieces of creativity, several noted below.

In these texts, as well as others, the sense of ennui permeates the title, as if the trudgeries of modern-day living have proved too much. It's easy to find numerous other texts from the early 90s that demonstrate this same, now somewhat strange, sense that nothing matters. In the era where social media has linked every human being together at all times, it must be an increasingly difficult concept to consider the sense of self, and of self-isolation. In Gen X - TV from The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place, Rob Owen posits that 'even Gen Xers who proudly boast 'Kill Your Television' stickers on their cars, grew up watching the box, and whether they like it or not, it has influenced their lives'.

So what happened in the 20 years from non-commital nodding to ensuring that ones' voice was heard, at all times, as loudly as possible, and to all corners of the world? 

In E Life After The Dot Com Bust, Peter W.G Keen mentions that following headline from the 1930s won the most boring, but read headline - 'Small Earthquake In Chile - Not Many Hurt'. But that entire concept, the idea that humanity must read into every faucet of existence, is what drives the internet as it currently stands. In the 90s, in the time where even Rodney King, impeachment, and OJ Simpson were met with a shrug of the shoulders, it would seem impossible to see such a story gain traction. However, in our constantly connected society, it's easy to see Facebook users tagging themselves as 'safe' given such a calamity. 

So why do we care? 

Because we are made to. 

It is reckoned that the average US adult now spends 12 hours a day engaged with media content, most of it through screen time on a phone. And one of the problems with that comes the constant communication. Picture this - a friend you get on really well with, one who lives half a world away, sees you every two years. Those two years are an occasion. They're celebrated. 

The same friend who now accesses you on social media, sees you 2 times a day. And they see everything you post, directly or indirectly. The sense of ennui is gone - everything needs a reaction, lest the discourse fail these days. In Blending Spaces, Julia Schwartz argues that we do not have the same 'time/space' paths as we would in a 'normal' society - that is to say, we do not get the personal space we need from each other. 

Our relationships therefore become extreme, focused, and entirely reactionary, where, in a 1990s environment, they would have time to breathe. 

This is not in any sense, a desire to return to that sort of environment - the early 1990s were popularised by desperation, a lack of control over societal issues, and other factors. But with all that in mind, there is something more simplistic in letting the ennui hit, and accepting responses 'as they are' without staring into the page.